cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3460175
Damn, that sucks. The French should have taken up Louverture on his offer instead of backstabbing him, then.
As it turns out, the Wikipedia page is shockingly wrong/misleading. The new Haitian government specifically carried out a vengeful campaign against the French whites including the poor “Petit-Blancs” who didn’t own slaves but largely supported slavery and white supremacy throughout the colony’s history, at some points even more fanatically than their rich counterparts (there was genuine threat of a mass revolt from them when the colonial government wanted to grant more rights to free mixed-race Haitians). Polish soldiers who assisted the revolution and German farmers on the island were spared, as well as non-French nationals (a common if unverified story is a white Frenchman who survived by pretending to be American).
This isn’t to say genocide under any circumstance is “okay” but I’m don’t think anyone is under any position to lecture people who were put under the sheer inhumanity of Caribbean sugar cane plantation system in particular or Transatlantic slavery in general. To say nothing of the depraved lengths the French, slave-owning or not, went to to preserve slavery in the revolutionary war (such as, as some in the comments point out, reprisal massacres, mass rapes, feeding prisoners to dogs, etc). It’s also inaccurate to say this was done only out of revenge when the fear of white French petitionining to have France reinvade was very real (as had happened). Even then, Dessalines’ mandate was far from uncontroversial or even universally-enforced. As with other things, this falls solely on France which has not even pretended to pay back the damage it has done to Haiti before, during and after the revolution.
Also, though rightoids and fashies like this guy are expected, it’s funny to see more liberal whites pearl-clutch over the 1804 massacres but somehow handwave the rest of the period as “simply another time”. You’re sure to find them under any post about the Haitian revolution bringing it up but if you bring up the fact that the American Founding Fathers were slave-owning, genocidal hypocrites on any post commemorating the 4th of July, you’re suddenly a party-pooper who doesn’t understand history.
These people have no understanding of the history of Haiti at all, the most they’ll tell you (if they remember anything) is that Christopher Columbus did bad things there like slavery and killing people. They usually can’t tell any details beyond this.
The only history they know and care about (if any at all) is 1776, Founding
FathersFuckheads, the existence of Columbus and Cortez, and the watered-down story of the English pilgrims that completely erases the history of the indigenous people of the Americas. They have been raised without this knowledge and learning the reality of the history of the US is not just an inconvenient truth, but an existential threat to the morality, freedom, and righteousness they think the US stands for and which they have built their personal identity upon.I don’t blame the individuals for how they were raised, but this widespread ignorance is unforgivable. Nearly everyone in the US is in desperate need of reeducation because the first round purposely left out, revised, or treated immense suffering with the cold detachment of only teaching the number who died.
Even then, they’ll usually dismiss it as “important” or “a neccessary evil” but won’t extend the same courtesy to the Haitian revolutionaries.
Not only that but they’ll blame modern day haitians for their ancestors actions, but refuse to even admit they benefited financially from the fact their ancestors owned slaves. It goes back to the whole thing where whites get judged as individuals and non-whites get judged by the actions of their most easily vilified peers.
I don’t blame them, yes (as I used to be one- Canadian myself). But they can either learn- and the knowledge is available- or when the time comes, if they cannot and will not learn, they can get the wall.
As you said, it is unforgivable. It is a level of ignorance that ensures that they will continue the genocidal, monstrous ideologies of Manifest Destiny/settler-colonialism, and that they will stand in the way of progress and as enemies of the rest of humanity.
They can learn or, if unwilling, in any decent system, die (whether through active measures or dying out naturally). Humanity cannot coexist with such evils, even if the rest of humanity tried the nature is such that it would only come back to terrorize them, to repeat the cycle until reeducated or put down for good.